Boris Johnson reveals how he cycled headlong into six foot pothole in Whitehall which broke his bike

Boris Johnson has revealed a six foot hole in a poorly maintained London road led to him going over the handlebars in a crash that put his trusted bicycle out of action for good.

The Mayor said he was cycling back in the rain after having lunch with his father in Whitehall when the pothole in the road broke "old bikey".

He found the confidence he had placed in Transport for London's road maintenance had been wildly misplaced, as the huge hole snapped the frame.

"As I cycled up Whitehall, I saw a puddle ahead; well, not so much a puddle as an inky mere that spread six feet across the road," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

"I wondered whether I should steer round it; and then I thought, nah. This is my road, a Transport for London road, serviced to the most exacting standards. To steer round a little pool of rainfall was not only wimpy; it was positively disrespectful to the superb roads-maintenance team in our Surface Transport division."

He continued: "Down, down, down went the front wheel for what seemed like a very long time, before jack-knifing on some storm drain or sunken U-boat or other obstruction at the bottom; and then, sploof, I went over the handle bars before making brief but thorough contact with the wet tarmac; and, boing-oing-oing, I bounced up again a millisecond before the taxi behind me could organise a swift election, and I had taken the bike off the road to assess the damage."

Unable to resist the lure of a political dig, he went on to describe riding the bike after the fateful incident to "like trying to run a coalition with the Lib Dems".

He added that the bike's downfall was probably down to it having been made in California, and pledged to buy British next time he was in the market for a bicycle.